We're tanned, we're rested, we're back from our holiday break. Many, many thanks to those who wrote with wishes and congratulations.
We're always vaguely concerned when we find ourselves nodding in agreement with Jonathan Yardley, worried that we've prematurely entered our Late Cranky Phase, but regular readers of TEV will know that one of our charming (or pretentious) traditions is to re-read The Great Gatsby every January. So we find nothing to disagree with when Yardley avers that "If from all of our country's books I could have only one, "The Great Gatsby" would be it."
It seems to me, though, that no American novel comes closer than "Gatsby" to surpassing literary artistry, and none tells us more about ourselves. In an extraordinarily compressed space -- the novel is barely 50,000 words long -- Fitzgerald gives us a meditation on some of this country's most central ideas, themes, yearnings and preoccupations: the quest for a new life, the preoccupation with class, the hunger for riches and "the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."
Think about that people ... 50,000 words. What's that, maybe fifteen Infinite Jests? (Actually, IJ probably has longer footnotes ... )
We can't imagine there are many TEV readers who haven't read it, but just in case, it's online here. There's also an interesting essay by noted Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli on "The publishing process and correction of factual errors with reference to The Great Gatsby." And, finally, here's a New York Review of Books essay on Trimalchio, the early version of Gatsby which proves, as we've learned, that authors are often the worst possible people to title their books.
Infinite Jest made me feel far less alone in the world than the Great Gatsby.
Posted by: John | January 03, 2007 at 10:39 AM
On the opposite spectrum we have Jane Smiley weighing in with a total pan of Scott's masterpiece, opining words to the effect that Gatsby isn't the world wide source of wisdom we've imparted to it, Fitz's "aphoristic style" only makes it seem so. And the ending is completely senseless "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
I don't know. Paul Simon got it. Even wrote a song about it. "The more you keep on..... the more you're slip slidin' away." If Rhymin' Simon can hack it why can't Jane?
Posted by: Robert Taylor Brewer | January 04, 2007 at 02:05 PM
I'm writing on behalf of Public Radio International's Studio 360, a weekly radio program about creativity, pop culture, and the arts hosted by Kurt Andersen.
I think you might be interested in listening to this week’s episode, part of our American icon series, devoted entirely to The Great Gatsby, which you can find here: http://www.studio360.org/americanicons/episodes/2007/04/06
Enjoy!
Posted by: Hadara | April 06, 2007 at 02:50 PM